MANDATORY sentencing — a key element of Labor’s policy to deter asylum boats — is having the opposite effect, encouraging Indonesian crew attracted by Australia’s relatively high prison pay.
Lawyer and former diplomat Anthony Sheldon says jailed crew members can make $20 a day in Australian jails, in his submission to the Gillard government’s expert panel on asylum-seekers.
Sadly, the rest is gated…but there is also this bit:
“The preference of a number of older fishermen is to remain in detention in Australia,” Mr Sheldon says in the submission.
“Depending on their jobs in prison, they can earn up to $20 per day, making them wealthy beyond comparison upon their return to their villages after their sentence is served.
“They also receive free dental and medical services during their imprisonment. “Combined with the relative safety of their work in prison compared to the dangerous work at sea, Australian imprisonment is very desirable.”
For the pointer I thank Philip Hegarty.
Soon we’ll have people lying about being in prison just to pad their resume`.
Are we talking about $20 for doing odd jobs around the prison or just for being in prison?
Also, can someone confirm that we we are talking about actual prison. Many people end up in immigration detention centres – which also prisons. But from excerpt it sounds like people actually convicted of people smuggling. In which case we are talking about normal jails, and it sounds like they are taking jobs away from good Aussie thugs.
Funny.
Sounds like everyone wins. The Australian government gives foreign aid targetted accurately at the most enterprising and risk-taking people in the poorest parts of the country. There will, of course, soon be people queuing up to get on the gravy train.
This story can replace the convict story about the power of incentives in Cowen and Tabbarok’s third edition: “200 years later…”
Conversely, would it deter First World crime if imprisonment was outsourced to the third world?
It sure would be cheaper………
I think you’re on to something…
I’m pretty sure it would deter criminals from surrendering peacefully.
Based on my cursory viewing of Cops that’s hardly a big change from the way they behave right now…….
Think Madoff et al.
I’m all in favor of shipping white collar scum to Turkish prisons.
We could save First World jails for criminals who *do* surrender peacefully. Let them resist a little, to preserve some self-respect, so long as they don’t cause significant injury to the cops.
If Wikipedia can be trusted, fully 46% of Indonesians live on less than $2 a day. So $20 is fabulous wealth. An additional benefit would be the opportunity to learn and practice English.
But that $2 is family income divided by number of members. Adult male (they have a fairly hih female labor participation rate, too) income at the low end is several times that $2. It’s still a very good deal for them.
For an example, $50 a month is what my in-laws pay for a live-in babysitter in Medan, the fourth largest city. That’s low-end labor at a city premium.
So, about that not being able to contract into slavery, we now understand that’s just a hypothetical discussion, right?
But they’re contracted into slavery for the government! That’s different, because government is benevolent.
Orwellianly referred to as the “social contract.”
Racism engineered by the Australian State. In the first place, Australia state punishes the asylum seekers by putting them jails — MANDATORY sentencing, in so called “detention centers”. These are practical prisons. There are children who were born in these detention centers stayed in these prisons for five years… Because the Australian state were still “considers” their asylum case.
Seeking asylum is a human rights. The problem is to use the issue to boost racism in Australia by racially assaulting asylum seekers and poor Indonasians, as if they need 20$ a day in exchanges of their freedom.
I have no clue why determining the legitimacy of an asylum application takes so long. 5 years?! And that’s not just in Australia.
Is that analogous to how I think FedEx intentionally delays my “Standard” deliveries to rake in more money off “Express”? How many classes of delivery can they reasonably offer between two cities 100 miles apart?!
Here’s how many: FedEx Same Day, FedEx First Overnight, FedEx Priority Overnight, FedEx Standard Overnight, FedEx 2Day® A.M,FedEx 2Day.
6 delivery classes and prices ranging from $17 to $70. What does the slowest class go on; a horse?!
/rant
Rahul, Australian govt has the incentive to delay processing to deter arrivals. On the one hand it is signatory to the UNHCR treaty; on the other hand the public here is extremely xenophobic towards refugees right now (politically manipulated, of course).
I have a suggestion which will reduce the incentive to commit crimes in the affluent western nations considerably: ship all their thugs to Tihar jail in India. It is probably better to be in hell than to be there. Especially in summer when it can be an oven, and I think even fans are not provided ( forget about air conditioning!) The thugs have to eat the horrid food served in Indian jails. With abysmal hygiene standards ( relative to those in the west) even in good restaurants in India, the American/European thugs in Tihar will soon be inflicted with all the abdominal problems listed in medical textbooks, and more. And when they do finally get out, they will be reformed to the point of becoming saints. Everyone wins.
I know I often help the poor after bleeding out of my rectum.
Where did you get your inside information on tihar jails? This article makes exactly the opposite point:
http://www.economist.com/node/21554233
Freedunker, Even the worst jails in the west are 5 star hotels compared to the best jails in India . Especially when it comes to food quality. Many expensive restaurants in India will not come up to to the hygiene standards you in the west take for granted even in cheap eat-outs. In jails things can get worse. Human rights violations can be rampant too. The pictures in the Economist piece may look great but for an American thug the conditions on the ground can be miserable.
Well, tihar seems to be the best deal among indian jails, anyway… but you do sound like you spent some time in an indian jail! And I am not “from the west”, like you assume.
Sorry freedunker, I guess I am wrong in presuming that all the readers of this blog other than me are located in the U.S or in some other western nation!
Hmmm, I thought Bang Kwang in Thailand was the worst prison in the world…
I am not the punishment-fetishist you are. Western countries achieve adequate levels of deterrence without inflicting such torture. (There is a responsibility to at least keep the prison clean, even if the prisoners are made to do it themselves).
Saturos, I am not a punishment-fetishist! I was having fun with a reader’s tongue-in-cheek suggestion that western nations can outsource prisons to the poor nations. About cleanliness: As a European relative of mine observed we in India think cleanliness is a sin.
A bit of context may help. The indonesians in question are not themselves asylum seekers or refugees. They are the temporary employees of Java-based Middle Eastern people-smugglers smuggling mainly Middle Eastern people (some are highly educated) from Indonesia to the Australian offshore islands, esp. Christmas Island, which is [google it] conveniently close to Java. The Indonesians are uneducated fishermen. Once in detention, the Middle Easterners wish to get out of detention ASAP – to go on welfare or get ‘normal’ paid work, Australia’s minimum wage being among the highest in the world. Rightly or wrongly, they are granted asylum, whereas the Indoernsians have to go home (as of course most want to do). In my view—but this is rabidly debated in Australia—far too many “asylum seekers” are just economic migrants, pseudo-refugees, improperly coming in the back door.
True dat! A country twice the size of India, with two-thirds of the population of California is “full”.
There are, what, 60K “illegals” in Australia? Do you know what we call that in Arizona? Tuesday.
What’s really crazy is how Australia treats nearly all Pacific Islanders like criminals. My co-worker was flying his family from one island nation to another, and the cheapest way to do so was via Australia.
Australia made him “dance naked” to get a transit visa for his family and then shoved it all back in his face by denying it.
There’s a claim that the “White Australia” policy has been dismantled, but from where I sit, Australia still looks whiter than a polar bear eating rice in the middle of a snowstorm.
Ah, but don’t you see, we have scarce water and arable land… *sarcasmalert*
Rodriquez – Let’s try to guess who might constitute the biggest number of ‘overstayers’ who used a transit via to get to Sydney or Brisbane. I wonder could it be … er, Pacific Islanders? Note too that there are massive numbers of Pacific Islanders [including Maori] – almost all legal – in Sydney. I mean: Island-born brown Australians. And finally, betcha we got a lot more Sudanese than Arizona and New Mexico combined: so there!
For example – “An Indonesian fisherman has been sentenced to more than six years’ jail for his second people-smuggling offence. Niko Selu, 66, was the captain of a boat that left Indonesia in March 2003. The boat was carrying 46 Afghan and Iranian asylum seekers, but was intercepted before it reached Australian shores. The Supreme Court in Brisbane heard today that Selu, who pleaded guilty to one count of organising the bringing of non-citizens to Australia, was to be paid less than $1200 for the trip. The kingpins of the people-smuggling ring were believed to have received about $500,000 for arranging passage for the asylum seekers. The court heard this was the second time Selu, who earned as little as AU$2 per day as a fisherman, had committed this type of offence. He was sentenced to four years’ jail in the Northern Territory in 2001 after pleading guilty days before the Federal Government introduced a mandatory minimum five-year term for this charge. In sentencing Selu today, Justice Peter Lyons said he should have been aware there were high penalties for bringing illegal immigrants to Australia. He sentenced Selu to six and a half years’ jail, with a non-parole period of three years.” – http://www.i4u.com/2012/07/australia/people-smuggling-jailed-fisherman
Hey, Bender Bending Rodriguez: your writing got style!
Maybe we should throw our prisoners in the pit and see who rises.
If I was Australian my main concern would be not the number of immigrants but their quality. Most are from cultures less advanced than western culture and are unwilling to integrate with western society. Muslims in particular can be troublesome: they want to live in the west but refuse to abandon their outmoded values. I am not a victim of Islam phobia : I would insist on throwing out Hindus ( I am an atheist Hindu, no contradiction ) if their values undermine western culture
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